Rewriting of the rules of social acceptability

Wednesday September 17, 2008

Thanks to over-zealous council officials, “a stroll in the park” has taken on a whole new meaning, reports Suzy Dean

Council officials are increasingly officious in restricting our freedoms. Most recently, the authorities in Telford, Shropshire, have given themselves the right to stop and question anybody seen walking alone in a park. The basis on which this has been justified? The fact that anyone taking a casual stroll may just pose a threat to vulnerable groups.

Upon being quizzed by a council official, citizens must provide a satisfactory response for their presence or risk being expelled from the park and reported to police. Two climate change protesters (dressed as penguins) felt the heavy hand of the law in just this way last week. For the most of us, a reflective walk in the park – be it by oneself, with a friend or a pet – is hardly unusual, but not so for the authorities in Telford, who have taken to stigmatising those who choose to behave in this perfectly normal way.

This power to stop any adult walking alone is an unprecedented ‘child safety precautionary measure’ – as Telford council have termed it – against paedophilia, a crime that is thankfully rare. So why institute such a policy when even child safety campaigners, Kidscape, have argued that these powers will harm children by presuming all adults are paedophiles?

Isolated

These new powers have less to do with the problem of paedophilia than with the increased suspicion authorities have over public use of space that they do not regulate.

Far from these policies being a response to an expressed public desire for tighter regulation, they demonstrate how distant and isolated from people the authorities really are. The recent wave of public space regulation is underpinned by the idea that given half the chance, people will behave irresponsibly, or without consideration for others. This has led to the notion that all space should be regulated or else it may end up in a situation where ‘it’s a free-for-all where they [people] can come and do what they want’, as one council spokesman said, as though this would be a bad thing.

This rewriting of the rules of social acceptability by the authorities follows a number of other policies that manage our behaviour in public space: from the bans on drinking alcohol in public places that are creeping up across the country’s parks and town centres, to no-flyering zones and police dispersal orders that give police the power to disperse groups of young people that happen to be socialising. Urban policy thinking is now dominated by that of management; to regulate the way that people interact with one another in public space and to control what they can and cannot do within it.

Suspicion

Even Shami Chakrabati, director of civil liberties group Liberty, has said that ‘the council must either have a demarcated child-only area or question adults only when they give cause for suspicion’, thereby accepting the councils right to question adult behaviour through some vague definition of suspicion. More importantly, Liberty implicitly accepts the council’s right to set the standard of appropriateness for public space.

It is now accepted that ‘if we have nothing to hide we have nothing to fear’. However, the impact on society of such measures is not something that any of us should ignore. Not only does it create the sense that all adults are potentially a threat or danger to children, damaging relations between the two, it also creates a situation in which the way we use public space is determined by the authorities rather than ourselves, as a free public. As space for the spontaneous and unknown is closed down, and seemingly normal activities are closely managed, we need to make a fresh stand for our right to behave autonomously, against those that only understand our freedom as a risk.

Suzy Dean is a writer and journalist and co-organiser of the Manifesto Club

Link
Manifesto Club

Event
The Manifesto Club and The Free Society are co-hosting a debate at the Conservative conference in Birmingham on Monday September 29. ‘You Can’t Do That! The Anti-Social Regulation of Public Space’ is at The Freedom Zone at 4.00pm. Everyone welcome.